Paranormal Witness: The Good Skeleton EP Recap Pt. 2

A bad skeleton and a good skeleton haunt a family's home in a rural city 

It was 1999 when Thomas Vuono, a New York City boy, needed to get away from craziness of the city so he took his wife Yuma and their cute little girl Azha across the country to the rural Yuba City in Northern California. The couple fell in love with their new house and they thought it would be good for their dog, Beau. The parents were concerned about living on the corner of a busy freeway because of young Azha and the dog but Thomas and Yuma made efforts to explain to Azha that she should never go on the street. On moving day, Beau constantly barked towards one corner of the yard connected to the garage. “It was a warning bark like someone was approaching but no one was there,” Yuma explained. There was a fence around the yard that was 10 ft. high and Thomas wrapped the barring wire around the fence multiple times to secure it. Poor Beau wouldn’t stop barking for the longest time. Yuma began to feel scared because Beau never barked unless there was danger. All the sudden, Beau suddenly stops barking.Yuma thought someone was touching the dog because that’s when he stopped barking. Thomas rushed out to see what happened and headed towards the one corner of the yard. He wasn’t in the yard. Thomas thought maybe someone let him go and tied up the wire but the wire was still secured. Thomas called and whistled to Beau. Beau wasn’t responding to Thomas’ whistling. Thomas became frightened at this point and went to search for him with a flashlight. Thomas flashed his light near the road….

Beau was lying dead on the front lawn and that’s when Thomas saw tire tracks on the street.

Thomas noticed the tire marks and came to the conclusion that Beau got hit but he noticed that the car must’ve veered off the road and was distracted, hitting Beau. Yuma ran out to the yard, kneeling down to Beau and was crying as little Asia was calling out to him and patting him on the head, hoping for a response. “I thought it was going to be a happy time, a new start for our family,” Yuma explained. “But it was a horrible start.” Yuma and Thomas were convinced someone let Beau out. It was the next day and Yuma noticed that in Azha was in her room having a full conversation with “somebody” but no one was in the room and this bothered Yuma because she never had any imaginary friends before. When Yuma asked Azha who she was talking to, Azha said she “was playing with Nick.” The family didn’t know anyone named Nick. The following day, Thomas asked Azha who Nick was. Asia then drew a picture of a mutilated boy with a bicycle next to him. “Here was a kid that looked like he was attacked from a chainsaw!” Thomas said, dumbfounded at the gory image Azha drew. 

Azha's portrait of her friend, Nick

It was routine for Thomas to work out in the garage every morning for an hour and on another typical morning, Thomas was working out. He notice Azha peeked in and asked her to sit on a stool to keep him company. Azha’s eyes widened and said “a bad skeleton is in there, daddy”. She looked in the other part of the garage and pointed, saying “Daddy, he’s over there”. Thomas said, “She looked like she just seen the devil. She said ‘the bad skeleton doesn’t like us daddy and is trying to hurt us’”. Azha, now a teenager, recalls her haunted past; “I didn’t go inside because this thing felt stronger than him (Thomas), more powerful than him. Whatever it was in that corner was completely terrifying.” Alarmed by what was happening to his daughter, Thomas stayed up at night. It was 2am and everyone was in bed and Thomas was out in the living room alone…or so he thought. He recalls what he had felt that night; “It was the creepiest sensation. It was like a spider web came across my neck. There was nothing on my hand…as I started to relax again, it felt like a hand going across my hair, my head! The hairs on the back of my head stood up. I had this feeling before in Vietnam, when something bad was supposed to happen…but I was in America, I was in my house.”

All the sudden, he heard Azha screaming from her room.

 Yuma and Thomas rushed up to Azha when she cried it was the bad skeleton. “It was a bad skeleton but I didn’t see bones on it,” Azha explains. “I knew a skeleton wasn’t alive and this wasn’t but I knew it was real. It was a figure with scary eyes and it was the most terrifying thing ever…and I was upset because they would not believe me….I actually remembered feeling threatened for my life!”

Azha didn’t want to sleep in her bed and cried every night. Yuma and Thomas thought it was the move and Beau’s death combined that caused her to have such anxiety and night terrors but the situation was getting worse. One day, Yuma woke up to dirt on her feet and couldn’t explain where it came from. Thomas stayed up late because he became concerned and became hyper vigilant for the sake of his family’s safety. One night, he hears the latch to the front door click open and sees Yuma attempt to open it. Her eyes were open but she didn’t say anything. She opened the door to leave but Thomas blocked her way. Yuma remembers hearing a voice and felt like she was under a spell at the time. 

"I put a spell on you...."

One night, it got worse…Yuma woke up and hears a voice telling her to come to the water. Across the street.  Across the big highway where a river was. “I felt like I needed to get into the river. I was like in a trance,” Yuma explains about her unusual sleepwalking. The voice kept calling her to the river. “Come into the water, be with me in the water. It was a very intense feeling and I had no control over it!” Yuma went outside and felt she wasn’t afraid of the river, of the voice, and she said she felt safe. She walked across the dangerous road. “I was so ready to go in the water, wherever this thing was telling me to go…” she remembers.  Thomas wakes up and notices Yuma isn’t in the bed. Thomas runs out and thinks she got run over. He was frightened that he lost his wife the way he lost his dog. But a Good Samaritan trucker brings her back to him and Thomas and Yuma embrace. Thomas wasn’t sure what to make of the phenomenon but Yuma felt that there was an evil spirit influencing a lot what was happening.  “But there was something there, something saved me from that truck,” Yuma said. 

After that night, Thomas saw Azha go into the garage “like she owned the place” and she said “Nick is here to protect us from the bad skeleton. He’s the good skeleton daddy.” Azha remembers her ghost friend fondly; “I remember the feeling that nick came around like everything was okay, that everything was wrong because the bad skeleton wasn’t in there anymore”. Thomas remembers her telling him that the good skeleton ran the bad skeleton off and it was only Nick in the house now. Azha would just start talking to nick like he was an old friend she had known forever. Azha explained she would talk to Nick when he would be working on his motorcycle, cleaning and tuning it up.

Past times with good company

One day, the Vuovo’s neighbors, Barbara and George come over to visit. Barbara asked Yuma about Azha and her night terrors. Years and years ago, Barbara and George had a neighbor named Nicolas who rode a motorcycle. Nick actually lived in the Vuovo house and was a motorcycle enthusiast. Coming home one day, he had gotten into a fatal accident where he rear ended a tractor trailer right at the spot where Beau was hit and also where Yuma was almost hit. He was badly mangled and died instantly. Thomas and Yuma finally felt that everything was coming together. 

Yuma didn’t care if it was a bad or good spirit, she was concerned that a spirit was haunting her daughter and that Nick wasn’t at rest. Both Thomas and Yuma wanted to help Nick cross over to the other side. Yuma was half-Vietnamese with her mother being full-blooded Vietnamese so Yuma asked her mother about how to hold a ritual to help spirits pass over to the other side. The parents held a ritual where they thanked Nick for helping them out and commanded him to move on towards the light. 

While Nick may have passed on over the other side, it was a decision that broke Azha’s heart. 

 “I still think about Nick. I miss him still. He was my friend,” she says. 

Janes Notes: I really have nothing to say about this one except why didn't PW have a warning to get out the box of tissues?!? Between Beau being killed and Azha feeling like she lost her friend, even years later, was just a total tearjerker for me. Both Yuma and Thomas seem like a genuinely nice couple and Azha seems like a sweet girl and I just hope that she finds some peace knowing her friend is now at rest.

Picture Credit: Syfy 

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